These are not easy times for Pavel Durov, who has become a figure under observation by Moscow – although several observers believe that the Kremlin has links or influence on Telegram (Durov denies it). After the attack on Crocus City Hall, the Kremlin last night defined Telegram as “a tool in the hands of terrorists”. No good, for Durov.
It was the sly face of Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, who told him without too many periphrases in an interview with the Shot (telegram) channel: «We would expect more attention from Pavel Durov. Because this unique and technologically phenomenal resource, which has grown before the eyes of our generation, is increasingly becoming a tool in the hands of terrorists – it is being used for terrorist purposes”. Then, realizing the darkly threatening sound of his words, he also explained that no, “the Kremlin currently has no intention of blocking Telegram on Russian territory”. But the message must have reached Durov. And they weren’t random words.
The story of the massacre at Crocus City Hall is – also – a Telegram story in the new season of war without borders. According to the Russian state agency Ria Novosti, which cited a source in the apparatus, the perpetrators of the attack were recruited through the Telegram channel of the Tajik cell of the Islamic State: the “Sadoi Khorasan” telegram channel (“Voice of Khorasan ”) belonged to the Tajik wing of the Islamic State, controlled by the Afghan cell of the Islamic State “Vilayat Khorasan” (ISIS-K). The independent Russian collective “Agentstvo” found a chat with that name with 86 participants, who recorded 42 and 27 messages on 28 and 29 February. A link to that chat instead appeared in two Telegram channels with 1,500 and 2,000 subscribers, and the message with the link read: “The lesson of monotheism and jihad has begun”. Obviously everything is now cancelled.
One of the four members of the commando, Shamsidin Fariduni, in the hot “interrogation” by the Russian security forces said that people “without name, without surname” had recruited him, offering him money, and after having “listened to the lessons of the preacher” on Telegram, then the assistant started writing to him. A man who called himself “Abdullo”.
The Duma yesterday proposed introducing heavier filters on Telegram. Anton Gorelkin, member of the Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, also pointed the finger at Durov: «If Pavel Durov really has innovations that can effectively combat the use of Telegram by terrorists, it’s time to demonstrate them. At a minimum, ban the receipt of messages from unknown contacts containing a certain set of prohibited words.”
However, no more than two weeks ago, in a rare interview (with the Financial Times), Durov explained that he was against rigid content moderation: one could use, he said, “mechanisms linked to artificial intelligence”, but maintaining a competition of ideas”: “As long as people don’t cross red lines, I don’t think we should control what they say. I believe in the competition of ideas. I believe that every idea should be questioned. Otherwise we risk rapidly sliding into authoritarianism.” Furthermore, after the introduction of advertising and paid premium accounts, Telegram is gaining value by hundreds of millions of dollars, and Durov has received proposals from potential investors, who estimate the current company at around 30 billion dollars. A tidbit which, however, is also of great strategic interest to the Kremlin.
Because of course, what made Telegram’s fortune (and determined its happy survival) is not only the “competition of ideas”, but the fact that the Kremlin probably already had the tools in its hands to control it, and even use it (l the company denies). There are those who are convinced that Russian services are able to read all messages: in Telegram, the API allows you to archive almost the entire messenger feed, and later, knowing the user’s phone number, it will be You can receive all messages you have sent to any public group. Several Russian opposition activists have publicly denounced this, explaining that their messages had been marked read even though they had never been read: Anna Kurbatova said last May that all the messages she sent, including the encrypted ones, had been flagged by Telegram as “read”, although he knew with certainty that the recipient had not read them. In April, St. Petersburg MP candidate Rina Matsapulina said that before a search, security forces had read all her messages in real time and, she explained, this had been confirmed to her by investigators, and was told by Baza – a channel (telegram) very informed about Russian security agencies.
Georgy Lobushkin, a longtime collaborator of Durov, recently explained to Wired that Durov “will never cooperate with the Russian authorities” and would rather leave the Russian market than do such a thing. So perhaps the time has come to sell. Then it will be necessary to check whether among the buyers there is not someone who is too close to Vladimir Vladimirovich.